


Graduation

by fraternite



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Crying, Gen, everything is stress, money stress, school stress, struggling student!Feuilly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-02
Updated: 2015-02-02
Packaged: 2018-03-10 03:21:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3274823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fraternite/pseuds/fraternite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Feuilly has been working toward this day for years.  Now that it's finally happening, he can't believe it's real.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Graduation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [onlyacoffee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/onlyacoffee/gifts).



> This story was inspired by Vé's heart-wrenchingly lovely headcanon post about Feuilly crying at his graduation: http://ravenclawfeuilly.tumblr.com/post/103345029467/takethewatch-ravenclawfeuilly-no-but

It doesn't hit Feuilly until they're actually walking into the stadium--two thousand students clinging to their precariously balanced square caps, their black gowns billowing in the breeze. This is really happening. He's graduating.

He stumbles a little as his vision blurs, and the kid marching next to him shoots him a concerned look. He smiles and waves off the offered hand, but the tears are spilling over as they cross the threshold into the stadium and he sees the stage and the "Class of 2015" banners and the bleachers packed with people.

Way over on the left, above the brass ensemble, he sees his friends, sitting up in the second tier of bleachers. They're all there, because Feuilly is the only one graduating this year; Jehan and Musichetta and (by some miracle) Grantaire were last year, and Bossuet has to do another semester still, so he'll walk next spring with Joly. (Enjolras, Combeferre, and Courfeyrac were two years ago, Marius and Cosette and Eponine are just freshmen, and Bahorel has been All But Dissertation so long nobody knows when he actually graduated from undergrad.) Feuilly sees them before they see him, but as he watches, he sees Courfeyrac point and grab Joly's arm, and then all of them are on their feet, waving enthusiastically. He smiles and waves back, hoping they can't see the wetness on his cheeks.

Once in his seat, he pulls himself together, drying his face on the sleeves of his gown and blowing his nose. He has plenty of time to collect himself, as the various speakers come up and welcome everyone repeatedly, and present alumni awards and honor the _cum laudes_ and the _magna cum laudes_ and the _summa cum laudes_. Feuilly doesn't have any Latin words attached to his degree, but he doesn't care. It's enough to be graduating at all.

  
  


* * *

  
  


"That's absolutely ridiculous," Enjolras says flatly. He's been pacing around the apartment, but he sits down again, leaning intently across the table. "He can't expect you to take a taxi every other Thursday night."

Feuilly shrugs. "But he does. The movies are a course requirement, and everyone else is doing them."

"Yeah, but everyone else doesn't live off-campus. Or work at six o'clock on Friday mornings."

"He doesn't care," Feuilly says heavily. "I explained why it was going to be really difficult to make the film nights, but it didn't seem to make much difference."

Actually, he wonders whether he'd hurt his case more than helping it, with this particular professor. In the past, when he'd approached professors about extensions or extra credit or additional help outside class, they'd seemed eager, or at the very least willing, to help him. Many of them had even seemed impressed that he was making the effort to seek out the help he needed.

But Dr. Martin had just stared at Feuilly, his face ominously neutral, as Feuilly had outlined the problem--the late ending times of the movies, the school shuttles stopping service at nine-thirty, the city bus route that serviced the campus ending at ten, the impossibility of walking the eight miles to his apartment at eleven at night with part of the route going along the highway. When Feuilly had finally faded off into silence, the professor had spread his hands.

"I see the inconvenience," he said, "but I'm not sure what you want me to  _do_ about it. The film showings are a course requirement."

"Would it be possible for you to put the movies on reserve at the library?" Feuilly suggested. "That way I and anyone else who couldn't make the movie showings could watch them when it worked for our schedules."

Dr. Martin shook his head. "No, no, no, these aren't the library's films," he told Feuilly.  _Well, no, I already know that; do you think I didn't already look them up in the catalog?_ "These films are from my private collection. The library can only put their own materials on reserve."

"Okay, is there any possibility of setting up an alternative showing for those of us who can't do the regular time?"

"The school is really very strict about how often they allow us to reserve rooms. I've already used up my alloted out-of-class time with the showings I've already set up. I can't really change the whole schedule just because it's inconvenient for one student."

_It's not inconvenient; it's impossible,_ Feuilly thought, but he just said, "Um . . . I'm not really sure what to do, then. I don't have a car, and without the busses I have no way to get home after these showings."

"You could take a taxi," the professor suggested. "I know they'll come out this far; a lot of the kids take them back to campus when they go out to the bars."

"I--I don't have the money to take taxis every week," Feuilly said. He thought about explaining to Dr. Martin that he ate rice and beans five times a week, that he wore gloves at home because he didn't want to turn his heat up, that he hadn't bought a new pair of shoes in four years. He didn't think it would do any good. "It's not possible for me, sir," he said meekly.

The professor looked at him skeptically. "Well, I don't know what to tell you, young man," he said. "It seems to me like you have a choice: You can find a way to make it possible, or you can skip the films and take your grade down . . . I think that'll leave you at a C, at most."

Feuilly had already worked it out: If he missed all the films and the related assignments, the best grade he could  _possibly_ pull off in the class was 73%--and that was getting 100% on all the other assignments. He wasn't going to get 100% on any of those assignments.

As Feuilly hesitated,  _willing_ to beg but not sure what he could even ask for, the professor had shut his laptop with a precision that said:  _This discussion is over._

"I think you need to ask yourself," he'd said, staring up seriously at Feuilly, "whether you're really making your education your priority."

When Feuilly gets to that part of the story, Enjolras dissolves into indignant sputtering and starts pacing again.

" _How_ can he say something like that about you, how can he  _possibly_ \--doesn't he  _see_ how hard you're working? You spend as much time studying as anyone I know--more than some people--and that's not even with a full course load."

Feuilly shakes his head sadly. "He knows my grades," he says. He doesn't have to explain that he puts in all those hours of work just to pull of Cs and Bs; Enjolras knows that already. "That's what he thinks of me as."

"It's not fair," Enjolras says. "You work  _so hard_ , and you have been for  _years;_ you're more committed to getting an education than anyone else I know. And for this professor to say that--just because his schedule doesn't work with the circumstances of your life, to accuse you of not making education a priority--it's, it's disgustingly unfair."

Feuilly sighs. "It's okay. I won't say it doesn't bother me. But it's not worth it to get upset about it, you know? I'm better off focusing my energy on finding a solution."

Enjolras leans on the tabletop. "You can stay here on Thursdays. You work on campus on Friday mornings anyway, right?"

"Yes. But I don't want to, to impose, or--"

"You wouldn't be imposing; we'd be glad to have you. Really, we would. I wish I could do better--if I had a car, I'd have already offered it, you know that."

Feuilly smiles tiredly. "Thanks. That would be . . . really,  _really_ helpful. But can you just check with Combeferre and Courfeyrac first?"

"I know they'll be okay with it."

"Ask them anyway?" Feuilly asks. "I mean, I'm going to be taking your couch, and I know Courf is a night studier-- _you're_ a night studier--and I have to go to bed early."

"It's not going to be a problem," Enjolras insists. But he puts up a hand to stop Feuilly's protests. " _But_ I'll ask them, just to make sure."

  
  


* * *

  
  


It's almost a half an hour into the ceremony when they finally start reading the names of the graduating seniors. They've arranged it alphabetically, by last name, so Feuilly's fellow graduating seniors (it still feels surreal to think of them in that context) from the engineering department are spread out across the program, starting with "Adams, Mark."

Feuilly recognizes more of the names than he'd thought he would. He's always felt on the margins of the campus social life, at best--being so much older than everyone else, spending half his time off campus, never having time for clubs or sports or parties. He's never known the people in his department too well, because they went through so much faster than him; he'd share classrooms with one cohort for a year, and then the next year it'd be a new group of juniors in the same classes as him. But at the same time, he's been stuck in the engineering department so long, having finished up his Gen Eds ages ago, that he feels even more cut off from the rest of campus, like he's spent the last several years in Rumbasser Hall and the library and nowhere else. He's been so cut off, he doesn't know why a few of the students receive much louder applause than anyone else--Are they sick? Did they lose a relative recently? Are they class president? He has no idea.

Still, he keeps hearing names he knows. There's Bagas, a physics major who suffered through Calc III with Feuilly (he'd been a freshman at the time; Feuilly, on his seccond try at the class, was somewhere between a junior and a senior)--and whose Sunday afternoon marathon study sessions are the only reason Feuilly passed the class at all. Courtney, who worked at the library circ desk her sophomore and junior years. James, the tutor who helped Feuilly with the math parts of his engineering courses even when Feuilly wasn't officially in any of the classes he tutored for. Xia, who was Feuilly's dialog journal partner for Literature of the Industrial Revolution, his last Gen Ed. A tiny kid with a huge mop of curly red hair--Feuilly doesn't know his name, but he remembers giving him directions to the music building four years ago, on the first day of classes.

Maybe he's not quite so disconnected after all.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Feuilly almost can't find the university tutoring center. The website says it's located in Hoffman Hall, but then the website looks like it hasn't been updated since maybe the 90s, and when he walks into the lobby of Hoffman and finds an empty atrium and a wobbly table littered with pamphlets from some sports event from two years ago, he has his doubts. A reception desk to the left of the door has a visible layer of dust on it, and the door behind it is locked, the window papered over. In one corner of the room, an ancient vending machine with a Pepsi logo from at least three rebrandings back flickers sourly.

But there's a hallway that leads off to the left and the right, and on the wall of the left hallway is taped a single sheet of paper with the words "Academic Support Center" in sans-serif font.

Halfway down the hallway, he comes across an open door. The room inside must be an old classroom, judging from the chalkboards along the near wall, but grey office dividers have been set up in it, cutting off most of the room and dividing it into cubicles. A student who looks at least two or three years younger than Feuilly is sitting at a desk pushed up against the nearest divider wall, scrolling through Facebook on the a desktop computer.

"Um, hi," Feuilly says, and she turns around.

"Oh, hi--I didn't hear you come in. Are you here to see Charli?"

"N-no . . . maybe? I don't know. I'm here to find out about tutoring."

"Sure, what subject are you looking for?"

"Um . . . all of them?"

The girl laughs, and then flushes when she realizes Feuilly hadn't really been joking. "Uh--okay, we don't actually have tutoring in everything. We're mostly language, honestly--German, Spanish, French--but there's one guy who does computer science and some math, and one of the Spanish tutors also tutors chemistry and physics."

"That would be great," Feuilly says earnestly. "Anything you guys can help me with. I'm in Calc I and Physics I now, and I'm honestly so lost. The Calc TA does study sessions but I don't even remember how all the algebra works and I'm just getting farther and farther behind."

The girl's lips purse in sympathy. "Math is horrible. Can you take a different math instead? The drop/add date isn't until next Tuesday."

Feuilly shakes his head. "I'm an engineering major, we have to take calc. Three semesters of it."

"Wow. Okay, well Martin--he's the tutor who does math--tutors on . . . " She thumbed through a binder. ". . . Thursday nights, does that work?"

"Um, what time?"

"Six-thirty to nine-thirty."

"I work on Thursdays, but I get done at nine. I could . . . " Feuilly sighs. "No, I couldn't get here until quarter after nine at the earliest, that wouldn't work. Shit."

"Is there someone in your dorm who could help you?" the girl suggests. "Or maybe your RA knows somebody?"

"I live off-campus," Feuilly explains. "By myself. So I don't really have anybody to ask."

"Oh." Her face falls. "I don't really know anybody else to suggest."

"I'll switch shifts with somebody," Feuilly decides. "I'll figure out something. I really don't think I'm going to make it through the semester without some help. What about the tutor who does physics?"

She hesitates, glancing at the floor. "Well, it's sort of supposed to be one hour of tutoring per week per student . . ."

Feuilly doesn't want to ask her to break the rules, but . . . well, he  _really_ needs the help. "Is there any way to . . . to get more? Is there somebody I can go to get special permission or anything?"

After another long hesitation, the girl shrugs. "We're not really busy right now, I don't think it matters. Maybe things will pick up at the end of the semester, but for right now, don't worry about it. So Janine is on Monday and Wednesday mornings, nine to eleven--do either of those work for you?"

"Could I do Wednesday at nine? That would be great."

"Sure." She writes his name in on the schedule. "And do you want me to put you down for Martin as well, or do you need to see if it's possible to change your work schedule first?"

"Yeah, put me down, please," Feuilly says. "I'm going to make it work. Somehow."

  
  


* * *

  
  


The student event worker charged with herding all the seniors through the ceremony motions for Feuilly's row to stand, and they join the slowly moving line at the side of the stage. It still doesn't feel real.

There's a table at the base of the stage where two of the professors are bedecking the students with the last bit of their academic regalia: They've all achieved college degrees, but they apparently can't be trusted to put on a hood correctly. For some reason, they have one of the shortest professors in the university--the woman who taught Feuilly's Western Civ class his second semester, eight years ago--doing this job, and Feuilly has to duck for her to get the hood over her head. He doesn't notice that the process knocks his cap askew, and she has to beckon him down so she can fix it for him.

He follows the students up the stairs to the stage, one step at a time as the line inches forward, then stops. His knees are shaking (why? he's not nervous). He makes the top of the stairs and waits as Richard Feng crosses the stage for his diploma.

Then the presenter says his name, and a  _roar_ rises from the students. Feuilly stumbles as he crosses the stage, taken by surprise at the strength of the cheering. He glances out at the audience and sees several people, graduating seniors as well as alumns and underclassmen out in the crowd, on their feet with hands cupped around their mouths. He should feel embarrassed, he supposes--finding out just how many people noticed, how many people were watching him agonizingly slog his way through his degree, half dead from balancing school and work, wondering if he'd ever actually make it--but today he's flying too high to care. Because the dean is shaking his hand and  _handing him his diploma_ .

He stumbles down the stairs and stops at the base of the stage, staring down at the sheet of paper, at  _his name_ written in fancy calligraphy, underneath the seals of the university, where he never thought he'd see it. He has a college degree. 

He just stands there gaping at the diploma for several minutes--and then somebody is tapping him on the shoulder and motioning for him to step into the photography spot for the official event photographer to snap his photo. Three or four new graduates are backed up behind him, so Feuilly hurries forward and poses as directed. He probably has a very deer-in-the-headlights expression, but it doesn't really matter; it's not like he's going to be buying these photographs anyway, not with loans are looming all too near on the horizon.

  
  


* * *

  
  


He wakes up to the sound of the apartment door closing, and starts up guiltily, rubbing his eyes and shaking his head to clear it. He's still gathering himself when Combeferre comes into the kitchen--stretching his stiff neck, picking up the papers he knocked onto the floor, trying to remember what it was he was in the middle of.

"We missed you tonight," Combeferre says, going over to the sink to get himself a glass of water. "How's the paper?"

Feuilly blinks furiously, still fuzzy from sleep. "It's." He glances at the screen of Enjolras's laptop: He's got half a paragraph, two incomplete sentences, and a long string of u's from where his head fell when all his pinching and slapping had failed to keep him awake. "Not good." He forces a grin. "It's so boring it put  _me_ to sleep; my professor's not going to make it through the first paragraph. Which is probably a good thing, since I'm not sure I'm going to have anything else."

"I'm sorry," Combeferre says sympathetically. He leans on the table. "Is it just a subject you're not interested in, or is there something unclear about the assignment?"

And Feuilly tries hard not to be bitter about the fact that these are the first two possibilities that pop into Combeferre's head when it comes to trouble writing--unclear assignments or uninteresting topics. Combeferre writes beautifully, effortlessly; he's said more than once that he's more comfortable writing than speaking. Not knowing how to put sentences together, how to make the thoughts in his head into words, how to organize them so they say something . . . has he ever struggled with this?

Feuilly isn't looking for brilliance here; this isn't like when Enjolras struggles over every word to get it  _exactly right_ , pushing himself to grasp at the language of gods when already his essay reads as if it were written by an angel. Feuilly just wants--needs--three pages of coherent sentences.

"I'm just not very good at writing," he says, finally. "I mean, just at getting  _anything_ on the paper."

"Getting started can be hard," Combeferre agrees.

"It's not--" Feuilly sighs, rubbing his temples. Falling asleep hasn't done anything for the headache building behind his eyes. "It's not starting. It's  _writing._ All of it, the whole way through. I don't know how to do it."

Combeferre frowns. "But you have great ideas. And you're good at expressing them in conversations. Writing is just taking that and putting it on paper--well, putting on the computer, these days."

Feuilly shakes his head. "I don't know, it doesn't feel the same to me."

Combeferre sits down opposite him at the table, leaning forward to rest his chin on his hands. "Why don't you tell me what you're writing about?" he suggests.

Feuilly hesitates. "It's environmental ethics," he says. "It's not exactly your field." Psychiatry major or no, Combeferre could probably do a better job on this paper anyway.

"Of course not," Combeferre says. "But sometimes it's _better_ to have a listener who doesn't know anything at all about your subject matter--it forces you to explain everything very carefully, and it can shed light on places where you might be assuming things that need to be explained explicitly."

"Okay," Feuilly says slowly. "Well. The assignment is to find a local project, a building development or a dam or something, that might impact the environment--something controversial--and take a side. And I have to argue for my side while still acknowledging the arguments for the other side."

"All right. What project did you pick?"

"I picked the new state park they're putting in over in Waverly, because it's interesting--it sounds really great, a wetlands preserve and all that, but the machinery they're bringing in to actually build the visitor's center and put in the boardwalk are going to do more harm than good. And it only saves a minor sliver of the wetlands that used to be on the site.

"Okay, great," Combeferre says. "So write that down--just like you told me."

"What, like 'The Waverly Wetlands preserve sounds really great' . . . you can't say stuff like 'really great' in papers; that's not academic language."

"Sure you can," Combeferre insists. "At least right now. The important thing is to get the ideas down; you can tweak the wording later if you need to."

"Okay . . ." It doesn't sound right to Feuilly, but Combeferre knows a lot more about writing than he does. Carefully, he types out something like what he just told Combeferre, and Combeferre sips his water and pretends not to notice how Feuilly still has to search for the _w_ every time.

"Like this?" Feuilly turns the laptop around to face Combeferre, who reads the sentence, then nods.

"That's fine. So now tell me more about the details--what "

"Do--do I need a transition word?" Feuilly asks.

Combeferre shakes his head. "Don't worry about that right now. Just get the ideas out."

So Feuilly explains about the pile drivers and their effects on wildlife, about the visitor's center and the parking lot and the increased traffic in the area, about the migratory birds that shelter in the wetlands in the summer--and with Combeferre sitting across from him, nodding and asking questions now and then, he can almost believe this is just an ordinary conversation about important issues, like so many other late nights around the apartment. Even stopping every few sentences to write down what he's just said doesn't throw him off too much.

It takes more than an hour, but finally he has five decent paragraphs about the positive and negative impacts of the wetlands preserve project, and Combeferre has walked him through summarizing his most important points to create the introduction and conclusion. The paper clocks in at just over three pages. It's still a pretty bad paper, Feuilly knows: The phrasing is awkward, the grammar is more guesswork than anything else, and he didn't really have a response to one of the opposing arguments. But it might be one of the best things he's ever written.

Feuilly sits back and rubs his eyes. "Thanks," he says, through a wide yawn.

"Any time," Combeferre says, and Feuilly can tell he means it. "Really. I've learned a lot tonight. You know, you should tell Enjolras about this too; I think he'd find it interesting."

"Well . . . I _do_ have four more of these this semester. So, um, if you really don't mind hearing about environmental ethics, I--" He swallows. "This really helped. I don't know if I could have done it without--"

"Of course you could. This was all you." Combeferre nods seriously. "All I did was tell you it was okay to say the things you came up with."

Feuilly privately thinks Combeferre did a lot more than that . . . but he works at six tomorrow morning and doesn't have the energy to argue. "Well, thank you anyway. And if you don't mind listening again in a couple weeks . . ."

Combeferre smiles. "Of course."

  
  


* * *

  
  


The rest of the ceremony is about as interesting as a list of 2,000 names can be, and Feuilly has time for his emotion to fade toward boredom as he sits through G through Z. Fortunately, all the padding in the program was at the beginning, and after "Ziegler, Mark" is called, the event wraps up quickly. The president of the university makes a few concluding remarks, invites everyone to the reception afterward, and then she's presenting the graduating class of 2015, and everyone around Feuilly is cheering and throwing their caps in the air.

And at that, Feuilly completely loses it. He hides his face in his hands and collapses onto his folding chair, shaking with sobs he can't hold back. All around him people are hugging and talking loudly, and all the while the ensemble is playing the recessional and he really should be standing to watch the professors walk out, but he can't because he's crying (with laughter mixed in as well) too hard. 

Because this is it, it's over, he did it. All those late nights falling asleep over textbooks, all those twelve-hour shifts on the weekends, all the years and years of explaining why the hell he's still in college in his late twenties--it's all been worth it. Because he's sitting here at  _his college graduation_ .

  
  


* * *

  
  


On the morning of his eighteenth birthday, Feuilly gets up at 5:38. He really should be waking up at 5:30, he never has  _quite_ enough time to get everything together before he's running out the door to catch his bus. But his hand slipped when he was setting the alarm originally, and he hasn't been able to bring himself to take those extra eight minutes away from himself.

He's late getting out the door today, the sky already getting light, and he has to run to catch his bus--but he makes it, so today is a good day. He even gets a seat for the ten-minute ride downtown, although when he switches to the Route 322 bus there aren't any seats (there never are this early in the morning). The second bus ride is nearly thirty minutes, and even standing up, Feuilly is nodding off by the time they get to his stop.

He works at a warehouse, counting plastic nuts and bolts and elbow joints and a million other random parts whose purposes and ultimate destinations are a mystery to him. Nobody else who works there knows either; he's asked around. His coworkers are mostly immigrants from Latin America and Southeast Asia, mostly middle-aged and older. He's considered trying to get someone to teach him Spanish--he knows he'll need a language in college, and nothing beyond  _Me llamo Feuilly_ stuck from his three years sitting through the class in high school. But there's so much picking up boxes and carrying them from here to there and pouring out pieces and counting them and packing them back away that Feuilly can't find the energy to do more.

He can see his breath in the air. The warehouse is bitterly cold in winter, the corrugated metal roof providing absolutely no insulation. He wears a coat most of the day, but he can't wear gloves because then he drops the plastic pieces, and his hands get terribly chapped. Summer is no better; the place is a furnace, and the few fans provided are usually broken or get stolen by the second warm week. But in spring and fall, it's not so bad.

It's a Wednesday, which means Feuilly has a shift at McDonalds after the warehouse. Fortunately, the 322 bus is running a little bit late, which means he's able to catch the early one at 3:05 instead of his usual 3:35 bus, winning himself twenty minutes after he gets to the restaurant to sit in the break room and put his head down on the table and nap.

Working fast food is hard, worse than the warehouse, and Feuilly is glad he only does four evenings a week here. The customers are more than demanding, upset beyond logic about pickles on their sandwiches and twenty-cent price hikes on fries and the fact that McDonalds doesn't sell chocolate ice cream. It's hard to deal with all of that with a smile, harder still when his feet are sending stabs of pain up his legs, regardless of whether he's walking or standing still.

But the worst thing about the restaurant, the thing Feuilly really hates, is the smell of the deep fryers. It hits him like a pillow to the face the moment he steps in the door, and it's there all night, making his stomach churn until he can barely choke down the free hamburger and salad he gets for his meal. It seeps into his hair and his clothes, and when he gets home he can still smell it on himself. When he gets home, the first thing he does is take a shower; he won't even sit down, because he doesn't want those grease-saturated clothes touching  _anything_ \--that, and also because if he sits down, he knows he won't make it back up off the couch again until morning.

It's 11:40 by the time he gets out of the shower, and he  _really_ should go to bed right away, because that alarm is going off at 5:38 again. But he allows himself twenty minutes--just until midnight--to sit down at the table shoved into the corner of his little studio apartment, and read.

He's working on an old physics textbook he found in a mildewy box at a garage sale in August. He's still only in chapter four (out of eighteen), because he has to go over every section two or three times before he really gets it. Science was never his strongest subject in school; he squeaked by with C's and D's and one glorious B in chemistry, junior year, and he didn't really understand any of what he was learning. But you need to be good at science if you want to be an engineer.

So he's working on it now, even though there's no way he's going to college for another year, at least. When he'd graduated from high school, he'd told himself a year, tops, of working really hard and then he'd have enough saved up to go. Now, with the realities of electric bills and rent and bus fare settling down around him, he's revising that plan to two years, maybe three.

But it's going to happen.

And that's why Feuilly spends the last fifteen minutes of his birthday treating himself to a little time to study. Because even if he's not learning much (he's afraid he's not learning anything, he doesn't know how to do this on his own, he's probably doing it all wrong)--he has to at least remind himself  _why_ he's doing all this. It's the only way he can keep going.

  
  


* * *

  
  


He manages to pull himself together as the seats around him clear out, but he's still sniffling and wiping his eyes when he sees his friends coming toward him across the emptying stadium. He smiles a watery smile and waves.

"Congratulations!" Courfeyrac bounds up to Feuilly, throwing his arms around him. He tucks his face in close to Feuilly's ear and whispers, "these are happy tears, right?"

Feuilly nods against Courfeyrac's neck. "Yeah. I'm just--sorry--this is a big deal to me." He continues explaining as Courfeyrac releases him from the hug to greet their other friends. "It was so hard, and sometimes I thought I wouldn't be able to do it, and--and I'm just so very lucky that I had this opportunity, and--" His voice breaks, and he finds himself mopping his cheeks again. "Sorry--I can't help but--"

Enjolras enfolds Feuilly in a rib-crushing hug. "It  _is_ a big deal," he says fiercely. "You worked so hard, and we are  _so_ proud of you."

"Yeah, no shame," Bahorel says from somewhere on the other side of Enjolras's hair. "Hell,  _I_ cried when you went up."

"He did," Cosette confirms. "So did Enjolras."

"We're all really proud of you," Combeferre says.

And it's a good thing his friends really, really love him, because Feuilly breaks down again right there; they pass him, trembling and sobbing, from hug to hug for another five minutes before he can stop crying. But even if they weren't so patient, Feuilly wouldn't be able to find it in himself to care today.

Because as of today,  _he's a college graduate._

 


End file.
